3 minute read
Mind-Body Medicine
Mind-Body Medicine
Think your way to better health
James E (Ed) Shotts MD
Mind-body medicine (MBM) is a relatively new concept in the West. However, in fact, Mind-Body Medicine approaches date back thousands of years to traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine. The concept became more widely accepted in modern medical communities with the introduction of Walter Cannon’s ‘Fight-or-Flight’ response in the 1920s and Henry Beecher’s ‘Placebo Effect’ in WWII. Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson published The Relaxation Response in 1975 that greatly raised awareness to the subject of MBM.
Since the 70s, extensive research has begun to explore the many connections between mind, body, and health. The mind has proven to be a major component in many disorders including high blood pressure, asthma, coronary artery disease, obesity, insomnia, anxiety, diabetes, stomach and intestinal problems, menopausal and PMS symptoms.
Mind-Body Medicine brings awareness to the profound effect of Thoughts, Feelings, and Beliefs on disease; and provides strategies to aid restoration of health and well being.
Dr Lissa Rankin, MD writes in her book Mind Over Medicine that the health care she had been taught to practice was missing something: the recognition of the body’s innate ability to self-repair and an appreciation for how we can control these self-healing mechanisms using the power of the mind. She writes that she suddenly recognized the medical establishment has been proving the body can heal itself for over 50 years….by using a placebo when conducting clinical drug trials. When patients enroll in clinical trials, between 18%-80% patients get better with the placebo. Why?
While positive beliefs about your health can improve your body’s physiology, negative beliefs can harm the body in equal measure. Scientists call this the “nocebo effect,” and it is just as powerful as the placebo effect.
Without doubt, our western medical model is the best in the world for diagnosing and treating physical disease. But what if, a percentage of the time, these real physiological symptoms stem from root causes of illness that began as thoughts, beliefs, and feelings in the mind that got converted into physiology in the body? What if one became susceptible to a strep infection because chronic stress weakened the immune system? These concepts and many more are discussed in the book The Healing Self with strategies to strengthen the immune system.
For those desiring a more ‘hands-on’ approach there are programs at major academic centers such as the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Harvard or the Mayo Clinic Stress Management Program. These clinics see outpatients on an ongoing basis; and also are certifying practitioners in the practice of Mind-Body Medicine. The programs incorporate structured SMART approaches and action plans to lessen stress and increase resilience. The acronym SMART stands for Stress Management And Resilience Training .
In short: Mind-Body Medicine taps the untapped potential of the ‘healing-self’ by merging the healer and the healed to foster self healing….while working in concert with conventional medicine therapy practitioners.
There is great hope and future opportunity - in spite of the complexities we now face with the delivery of health care in the US - for the individual to play much greater role in their health maintenance, and develop their own effective and personalized path to self-healing.
Stay tuned! There is much more to ponder with respect to the untapped power of the mind and human consciousness.
